What Really Goes on at Hotels Overnight?

The overnight staff from a Lower East Side luxury hotel talks vibrators, bodypaint, and vomit

New York City's booming tourism industry caters those seeking luxurious accommodations for business or pleasure. But sometimes that pleasure can get a little out of control. It's their job to be discreet, but we got the overnight staff at one of the Lower East Side's top boutique hotels to fill us in on all they've witnessed over the years.

One night, probably around one or two in the morning, a guy checked into the hotel with two women. He was alright looking, but the women were fucking gorgeous, and they were all covered in body paint. They didn't have a reservation, just walked in covered in body paint and went up to the room. An hour or two later he calls room service. I answered the phone, and the entire time he's trying to place the order I was super distracted because the girls were in the background going at it. Moaning like crazy, screaming, it was ridiculous. He ordered a bottle of champagne or liquor or something. The room service guy working that night is this reserved guy, foreign, doesn't speak perfect English, but he's very put together. I told him what was going on when I gave him the order so he could mentally prepare himself. You know, here's their order, bring three glasses, but I'm warning you what's going on in there, just so you know what you're walking into, whatever you've got to do.

When he got up to the room, the guy answered in a towel and that's it. He goes to put the tray with the bottle and the glasses on a table inside, and the two girls are completely butt ass naked in the bed still going at it. They don't even acknowledge the room service guy's existence. But then one of them turns around, looks him straight in the eyes, and said, "Don't you wish you could join us?" His jaw just dropped. He didn't say anything at all. Just put the stuff down, stuttered, tripped over himself, and left the room. When he came downstairs and told the rest of us what happened he was stumbling over his words so bad we could barely understand him. We didn't see him for about an hour and a half after that. Don't want to know where he went.

—Ben

One time there was a bunch of French women standing around in the lobby dressed as French maids, like with the little apron and that's it. They were completely cool with standing there practically naked in the lobby, just in these little aprons. The lobby manager at the time didn't care, he was joking with them the whole time. "Excuse me ladies, housekeeping is needed on the second floor," and stuff like that. I can't even remember what they were doing there.

Another time a dozen college girls walked through the lobby wearing these stupid fake noses and glasses and mustaches. They headed to the bar and a few guys were checking them out, thinking they were pretty cute, but about 10 minutes later they all came back out and none of them had shirts on. Just tits out for no apparent reason. They were all cheering and laughing. They just walked back through the lobby and stood in front of the hotel with no shirts on for a bit. It was one of those moments where you just want to quit and follow someone.

—Garrett

A guy once came into the hotel and asked me to book him a massage. I asked if he had a preference between a male or a female masseuse, and he said, "Definitely a female." Then I asked what kind of massage he wanted. You know, shiatsu, Swedish, or whatever. You know what he said to me? "Happy ending." I looked at him and said, "I'm sorry, we don't do that here," and he looked a little disappointed but he didn't push it. In retrospect, I should've sent him to the bellmen. They would've pointed him in the right direction. Anyway, he left a day later. We have these letters in the rooms where guests can leave us a note on whether they've had a good experience or a bad one, and he drew a picture of me that said, "Your front desk lady is very lovely. She is very polite, even when asked ridiculous questions." I was pretty creeped out. It was a caricature of me, which freaked me out even more than the whole happy ending thing, because it was perfect and looked just like me. I saved the picture.

—Cindy

There was this woman who stayed at the hotel all the time, she was super sultry and sexy but she knew she was hot. She'd always come back to the hotel with bags from Victoria's Secret and Babeland and all that. She checked in with her husband one day and I told them to go ahead upstairs to the room and I'd be up in five minutes with their bags. As I was lifting the bags onto the bell cart, all of a sudden the whole thing started going zzzzz. It was vibrating like crazy all the way up to the room. I knocked on the door and there's no answer. I knock again and hear from inside the husband yelling, "Aw, for fucks sake, one minute." They were obviously in the middle of something. When he opened the door he only cracked it about a foot, and he's standing there with the smallest little hand towel just barely covering himself and all flustered and waving at the bags like, "Come one, give it to me already." I was really only five minutes behind them, I guess they just couldn't wait at all.

—Kunal

I was working the overnight one time when these two young guys came in. They both smelled like alcohol, but one of them was obviously way more drunk than the other. They said they wanted a room just for the night, and when I said the room was $495 a night plus tax the one who was fucking wasted put his credit card down, looked at the other guy and said, "You're going to have to pay me for half of this." He agreed, but didn't seem too happy about it. About 15 minutes after they went up to the room I got a phone call from one saying, "This is a little awkward, but, um, I need a condom?" I told him that we had some in the minibar. We actually have a whole kit with lube, silk wrist ties, stuff like that. A few hours later one of them left, and the other came to check out about 45 minutes after that. They'd only been there for a few hours, got in at maybe 1:30 or 2am, and left before 6. I reminded him that there was more time until checkout and how much he was paying—the other guy was long gone—but he just mumbled some stuff and rushed out. This whole time, he completely reeked of vomit. It was so gross I had to hold my breath while I was checking him out. Apparently when housekeeping went to clean the room they were hit with such a wall of puke stench.

—Rachel

There's a lot of nudity in the lobby. A guest once got locked out of his room completely naked. He said he went outside because he thought his room service had arrived and was left on the floor outside his room, but he let the door close behind him. He had to get another key, so at 2am he walks to the front desk. He's just standing there with nothing on as we're trying to make him a new one, so I asked one of the other employees to get him something to cover himself. But he was so drunk that he didn't know what was happening, so when someone handed him a newspaper to cover himself he just left the newspaper on the counter! The following morning he was so embarrassed and came downstairs to apologize to everyone for making them uncomfortable. At least he remembered the whole thing.